Upcounty residents resolved to keep Monocacy Elementary open

Parents say decision to consolidate with Poolesville is not being given enough time

The rural upcounty community has rallied behind Dickerson's Monocacy Elementary School, which the county schools superintendant has proposed closing by August due to a projected decline in enrollment.

Parents say they are not being given enough time to respond to a recommendation that they said could have a devastating effect on their school cluster and that many of their questions have gone unanswered.

Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Jerry D. Weast announced his recommendation to close Monocacy in an Oct. 23 memo, a move that he said could result in a net savings of $1 million per year. Parents disputed the memo's contention that small schools have programmatic and educational issues, and many said they chose to send their children to Monocacy because of its small size.

"Bigger isn't better, we all know that," said Barnesville Mayor Pete Menke, whose four children graduated from Monocacy. "I've never heard a school board person run for election and say I'm for increasing class size.' You don't have to be big to do it right and do it well."

Weast's memo states that small schools may not be able to offer as many programs and can have trouble balancing class sizes, though schools spokesman Dana Tofig could not name specific educational benefits that would come from consolidation.

Extra-curricular activities at Monocacy include a chess club and a juggling club that regularly performs at minor league baseball games and other events. More than 90 percent of students made adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act for math and reading except in the third-grade math category, where 86 percent of students made adequate yearly progress.

"I like how it's a really small school and like a family," said Monocacy fourth-grader Dottie Ballmann, 8. "Everybody knows everybody, there's not one person in the school you don't know."

All but $50,000 of the projected cost savings would result from eliminating 11 staff positions, Tofig said. Staff will have the opportunity to transfer, he said.

More than 100 people, including representatives of the cluster's four PTAs, attended a community meeting in Poolesville last week to discuss the proposed consolidation. The community is "greatly concerned," said Cluster Coordinator Sarah Defnet, who said parents have been lobbying the school system to increase enrollment in the cluster for years and that MCPS is rushing a decision that should be considered on a similar timeframe as a boundary change, which requires an advisory committee of stakeholders to meet in the spring to provide input in advance of a recommendation by the superintendant in mid-October.

Weast has also proposed opening a new elementary school in Clarksburg by 2013. Shifting some Clarksburg students to Monocacy was not considered because it would create long travel distances, Tofig said. The westernmost part of Clarksburg closest to Dickerson is about 10 miles from the school, the same distance as Poolesville Elementary for some Monocacy students.

"I'm telling my kids to plan for the worst but hope for the best," Monocacy PTA President Dawn Albert said at the meeting. "My oldest is going to middle school next year but she was the one who started crying when she found out. This is a teachable moment, this is democracy."

Monocacy can hold 206 students and 176 are enrolled, putting the school at 86 percent capacity, within the school systems' efficient utilization rate of between 80 and 100 percent of program capacity, according to Weast's proposal. Poolesville can hold 549 students and has 387 enrolled. Enrollment is expected to drop to 157 next school year at Monocacy and to 358 at Poolesville, the proposal said.

The preferred enrollment range for elementary schools is between 300 and 750 students, though departures may occur, according to a four-year-old MCPS administrative regulation for long-range educational facilities planning, which is not a Board of Education policy.

Parents also wondered what the recommendation meant for the other schools in the cluster. John Poole Middle School has capacity for 472 students but 379 students were enrolled last year, under the preferred minimum enrollment of 600 students for middle schools.

Even with its whole-school magnet program, enrollment at Poolesville High School was 49 above the preferred minimum of 1,000 students for high schools.

Tofig did not provide information on how the future enrollment projections were determined by The Gazette's deadline. He said no decisions have been made about the school's site in the county's Agricultural Reserve, where development is restricted to protect farming. MCPS spent $510,000 on a new roof at Monocacy this summer.